The Three Ideologies

            What were the major political ideologies of the 19th century and how did they influence social and political action? This was the essential question we were asked at the beginning of class. An ideology is a system of ideas and ideals especially ones that form the basics of economic or political theory and policy. They are the ideas and manner of thinking characteristics of a group, class, or individual. Also, there are three main ideologies which are liberalism, conservatism, and nationalism. To learn about these ideologies the class was divided into six groups and every two groups were assigned either liberalism, conservatism, or nationalism. We were then asked to create a sixty-second project explaining what our ideology is and how it impacted the social and political systems. To get the information we read a brief article going over the history of each one. The point was to create a better project than the other group that had the same ideology. My group was assigned liberalism and we decided to make a common craft.
            In our common craft we explained how liberalism promoted individual liberty and supported innovation and reform. Liberalism opposed the monarchy. People who supported liberalism believed in god given natural rights and laws and no one could tell one another what rights they had based on their social status. The middle class supported liberalism a little more than the upper class because it gave power to the middle class and took power from the upper class. They thought everyone had the right to better themselves and contribute to society in their own ways.

It impacted the social system because it introduced a new system call meritocracy. Meritocracy gives everyone the chance to change their social class if they chose to. Those who did were rewarded based on merits. This gave people the option to have a say in what the government does and how it is run.

Liberalism impacted the political action by developing the system of the invisible hand. The invisible hand was a new economic law. It guided human behavior in society.

            The other two ideologies are conservatism and nationalism. Conservatism is the opposite of liberalism. Conservatism like the monarchy and wanted to keep the church in power by adapting old ideas into the new government. It opposed meritocracy because of their fondness for the monarchy. Conservatism is very traditional and doesn't like the idea of change or innovation. Their biggest fear is that there will be a revolution and chaos if the systems are changed. Then there is nationalism. Nationalism and liberalism are connected through their positive outlooks on new social and political actions. Its main purpose was to bring nations together by their shared language, custom, and history. They think that if they unite under one government it will aid them in the protection from foreign forces. For example, Napoleon was able to invade and conquer Italy and Germany fairly easily and it is because Italy and Germany weren't working together to ward off Napoleon and his troops. Maybe if they were united through conservatism Napoleon wouldn't have took over so quickly or maybe wouldn't have been able to take over at all.